


It Takes A Dragon

by DameRuth



Category: Sherlock (TV), The Hobbit - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Crack, Crossover, Friendship, Gen, Humor
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-10-03
Updated: 2011-10-03
Packaged: 2017-10-24 07:00:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,339
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/260427
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DameRuth/pseuds/DameRuth
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A crack crossover generated by the casting of Martin Freeman as Bilbo and Ben Cumberbatch as Smaug.  In this version, it's more than a single hobbit who returns to the Shire after the Adventure Of The Lonely Mountain.</p>
            </blockquote>





	It Takes A Dragon

**Author's Note:**

> My brain is a very weird place. It's been a long time since I've read the Hobbit/LOTR-verse canon, so please forgive any gross errors. Also, I know Lobelia used better grammar in canon, and I'm not sure "sass" is proper Hobbit-ese . . . but it's crack, so I'm not stressing those minor points and I hope you won't, either.

“John Watson Baggins!”

I flinched and broke off in mid-sentence, looking up from the book I'd been reading aloud to find Lobelia Sackville-Baggins glaring at me. She had her umbrella clutched in one hand and her husband trailing along behind her, and she looked like she'd been sucking a lemon all the way over. I reminded myself that I'd faced scarier things than Lobelia in my travels to and from the Lonely Mountain, but those things were far away and Lobelia was right in front of me. A matter of perspective, and all that.

I sighed, marking my place with my finger, and leaned back in my chair, which wobbled a bit, the legs not quite settled evenly on the grass of the field that lay just south of Bag End. Overhead, the leaves of the single large tree that adorned the field rustled in the breeze, sending flickers of light and shadow across the ground. All in all, it had been a perfect summer's afternoon in the Shire . . . until now.

“Yes, Lobelia, I'm back. Sorry, you aren't getting Bag End just yet. And I'd like to ask you about some spoons I seem to be missing.”

She cut me off, without, I noticed, addressing the spoons. “So you just go haring off after a wizard and a bunch of dwarves without so much as a by-your-leave . . .”

“I wasn't aware I needed _your_ leave to do anything,” I said, mildly, and was, predictably, ignored.

“And then you come back dragging . . . this _thing_ along with you.” She made a stabbing gesture in Sherlock's direction with her umbrella. “It's not decent!”

Sherlock, for his part, appeared to be asleep, but I knew enough about dragons to recognize _that_ for trick it was. His impressive black coils were looped around and around the base of the tree – the only thing on my property large enough to shelter him, though I was having Bag End enlarged to change that state of affairs. I noticed the workers I'd hired for the renovation were stopping in their tasks and drifting in our direction from the Hill, no doubt hoping for a show to watch and a tale to tell. I'm fond of my fellow hobbits, but we are a dreadful bunch of gossips.

The play of light and shadow picked out shifting red-and-gold iridescence on the surface Sherlock's inky scales, but he himself lay completely unmoving, chin cushioned on one taloned forepaw, eyes closed, the barest wisps of smoke drifting up from his nostrils.

“It's the Brandybuck blood in you,” Lobelia continued, hitting a familiar stride as she turned her attention back to me. I bridled, as I always did when she chose to insult my lineage, but knew any attempt at defense would only lengthen the harangue. “Even worse than the Watsons, them Brandybucks . . .!”

“ _Those_ Brandybucks,” a massive, rumbling voice interrupted her.

Lobelia's eyes widened, and she turned slowly to look at Sherlock.

He hadn't moved, but he was looking back at her, one huge, silver eye half-open, luminous even in the bright afternoon shade.

I heard a few gasps from the gathered workers – though whether in response to Sherlock's impressive voice or the stunning image of someone (even a dragon) talking back to Lobelia, I wasn't sure.

“What?” Lobelia asked.

Sherlock sighed gustily, puffing a bit more smoke into the air. “The correct wording is 'those' Brandybucks, not 'them' Brandybucks,” he clarified, speaking very slowly and with a decidedly condescending air.

Lobelia gaped at him, but even in the face of a dragon fifty times her own size offering grammatical correction, she wasn't about to be silenced for long.

“What _nerve_!” she declared, glaring at Sherlock. “I never . . .!”

“. . . Learned to speak Westron properly?” Sherlock finished for her, sounding unutterably bored. “I can tell. Still, you should try it sometime. It's really quite simple. I'm sure even you can master it.” His eyelid drifted shut as he spoke and he fell still again, feigning a return of sleep.

I heard a chorus of muffled snickers from the assembled onlookers. Nearly every hobbit in the Shire has run afoul of Lobelia's sharp tongue at some point, and payback, even vicariously, was sweet.

“John! Are you going to let him speak to me that way?”

“Lobelia,” I said, shrugging. “I don't _let_ him do anything. He's his own dragon.”

She opened her mouth to say something more, but I interjected, “He also breathes fire. And that's _not_ a figure of speech. Something to consider.” I smiled, leaned back even further in my chair and crossed my ankles. “But. Do.” I gestured in Sherlock's direction. “Have at him.”

Lobelia narrowed her eyes at me, but I could see her mind working, weighing the odds. She was obnoxious, but she'd always had a good sense of self-interest.

“And then, if there's anything left of you, we can further discuss the whereabouts of my good silver spoons . . .” I added.

 _That_ did it.

“I've better things to do than stand out in a field all day, taking sass from you and your giant lizard.” (An extra puff of smoke escaped Sherlock's nostrils, but he carried on with the charade of sleep.) “You just keep your head down – these are respectable parts, and we don't need no trouble out of you and your mad Brandybuck ways. Come along, Otho!”

She spun on her heel, with Otho following meekly along, but her proud exit was somewhat spoiled by a deep, rumbling, exceptionally _carrying_ aside: “Don't need _any_.”

The workers gasped. I admit, I held my breath as well.

Lobelia's back stiffened and she stopped in her tracks, just long enough to prove she'd registered Sherlock's parting shot . . . but she didn't turn, and after a moment she kept right on going, heading for the gate.

When she was at a safe remove, the workers relaxed and began to chatter freely.

“Well done, Mr. Sherlock!”

“Never thought I'd see someone stand up to that old bat.”

“Din'cha know? Takes a dragon to beat a dragon!”

With much laughter and good humor, they began to drift back to work. I couldn't help breaking into a grin. By evening, the story would be all across the Shire. Sherlock was definitely on his way to being a local favorite, regardless of species.

The dragon of the hour snorted, though his eyes remained closed. “Tedious. I begin to see why you followed a wizard and a bunch of dwarves halfway across Middle Earth.”

I laughed. “There was more to it than getting away from my relatives, but I must admit, it made for a nice change of pace.”

“I wonder if I will find this place more boring than I thought.”

“It's not like you can go back to the Mountain, now the dwarves are living there – and come on, it's not that bad. Nothing as exciting as finding the Arkenstone and dealing with that Five Armies hulaballo, I admit, but things happen in the Shire, too. After all, you helped Farmer Maggot catch those mushroom thieves.” My nephew Frodo and his young friends, as it turned out. The looks on their faces when Sherlock had risen out of hiding from the underbrush and accosted them red-handed had been priceless. Those lads were never stealing so much as a bean again in their lives, I was willing to bet. “And there's that scarecrow over in Michel Delving that keeps disappearing.”

“Mmmmmmm,” Sherlock rumbled, sounding mollified. “On the subject of disappearing objects, you also hinted there was a matter of some spoons . . .”

“Oh, that's no mystery,” I said. “I know exactly where _those_ went.”

Sherlock chuckled thunderously; I could feel the vibration in the earth through my chair legs. “In that case,” he said, “you had just reached the point where Beren and Luthien had located the Silmaril . . .”

“Indeed. I'm rather proud of this next bit; there were some tricky shades of meaning in the original,” I said, and resumed reading from my translation of the _Silmarillion_ while the golden summer sun continued to sink towards the western horizon.


End file.
